Dogs and Matsutake?

Mycos wrote:
>> Anybody hear anything about using dogs to sniff out buttons of T.
> magnivelare or T. caligata (um). The unique odor would lend itself to
> this practice but I never hear anything about it from the hardcore
> pickers.
The French and Italians train dogs to sniff out their black Perigord
and white truffles. They also use pigs, which look for them without
training,
though the size of the pigs and their liking for actually eating the
truffles are quite a disadvantage. According to D.Wheeler, in the USA
they usually look for ground disturbance by small mammals, rather than
training dogs. Here in the UK our only truffle (T.Aestivum) is not
sufficiently highly regarded to warrant a lot of special hunting.
Edwin Hutton